For more than a week, thousands of Albanians have flooded the streets of their capital nightly, clutching plastic replicas of the birds that nest along the country's protected Adriatic coast, the same coastline that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump want to turn into a luxury resort. They have chanted outside the prime minister's office, clashed with police, and held signs reading "Albania is not for sale" and "Ivanka, go home." They are calling it the Flamingo Revolution.
The project has two components: a coastal development in the Narta Lagoon area, a wildlife reserve on Albania's western coast, and a resort on the nearby uninhabited island of Sazan, a former communist-era military base. The planned development encompasses hotels, apartments, villas, and a marina. Estimates for the project's total cost range from $1.4 billion to $4.7 billion.
Ivanka Trump, who is married to Kushner and is the daughter of President Donald Trump, described this week how the couple came to pursue the project. "We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it," she told podcaster David Senra. "We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top. And we were just captivated. And it stayed with us ever since."
For many Albanians watching bulldozers tear into protected sand dunes, the anecdote landed poorly.
In 2024, the Albanian parliament passed special legislation reclassifying Sazan Island and the surrounding Pishë Poro–Narta area to permit large-scale luxury development, a move critics argued was crafted specifically to accommodate investors linked to Kushner and Ivanka Trump. The reclassification granted "strategic investor" status to Kushner-linked companies, fast-tracking approvals and providing tax incentives. Prime Minister Edi Rama signed preliminary approval for the venture on December 30, 2024.
Demonstrators told reporters that the early planning stages of the development had already caused environmental damage. A local environmental officer told CBS News that at least one sea turtle nest in the area had been destroyed by bulldozers. The Vjosa delta is home to approximately 3,000 flamingos, Dalmatian pelicans, and loggerhead sea turtles, among other protected species.
Activists withdrew the bulldozers amid mounting public pressure, though demonstrators said they believed the move was an attempt to quell public anger rather than a genuine concession.
Albania's Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, known as SPAK, has opened an investigation into the project's approval process. Opponents have pointed to the speed and opacity of the government's permitting decisions as evidence of undue influence, allegations the Rama government has rejected.
